Merged: Qantas jet was on collision course
This article appeared in the SMH written by one Andrew Heasley
TWO passenger planes with 443 people on board were involved in a near miss over Mildura's outskirts last year after an air traffic controller failed to notice they were on a collision course, it emerged yesterday.
One of the planes was a Qantas 737 with 143 passengers and seven crew aboard, flying from Sydney to Adelaide, the other an Emirates Boeing 777 carrying 276 passengers and 17 crew, flying from Melbourne to Singapore on September 3 last year.
An air traffic controller cleared both planes to cruise at 30,000 feet, but their flight paths meant they would cross in the same piece of sky 60 kilometres south-east of Mildura in Victoria.
The drama began when the collision course went undetected for more than 17 minutes, according to an Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation. A ''conflict alert'' flashed up on the air traffic controller's radar screen, the planes less than 19 kilometres apart and closing fast. As the seconds ticked away, the air traffic controller tried to make contact with the Emirates pilots three times, to no avail.
A minute after the alert, the gap had halved to 9.1 kilometres - breaching the allowable minimum space between the aircraft - and he radioed the Qantas pilots to ''turn right'', which they did. Seconds later, he ordered the Qantas pilots to climb their craft 1000 feet, and the gap had shrunk to 6.7 kilometres before the Qantas pilots confirmed they were flying higher, and the drama was averted. A minute later, the air traffic controller was stood down.
The bureau's report does not calculate the time to projected impact had the Qantas plane not climbed out of the way. That, a bureau spokesman said, was ''conjecture''.
But an aerospace engineer who spoke to The Age calculated that at the pace of 10 kilometres a minute, the planes were about 40 seconds from hitting had evasive action not been taken. ''The controller could have observed that they [the 777] and the 737 were on crossing tracks and likely to be in conflict,'' the safety investigators said.
Qantas pilots told investigators they were aware from their cockpit systems of another aircraft closing in.
''The fact that the controller did not recognise the conflict at any stage would indicate that he had not resolved the deficiencies identified in his performance during training,'' investigators concluded.
Airservices Australia undertook to revise parts of its air traffic controller training program.
I sent him this as I am sick to death of the so called Qantas Bashing.
They do it because most of the overseas major airlines give them so many freebees/upgrades etc they wouldn't dare complain about other airlines.
Andrew,
I am trying to be very composed while I write this.
If you read the ATSB records, the EMIRATES aircraft failed on multiple occasions to respond to ATC
In desperation, the ATC controller then asked the Qantas aircraft to do something that they immediately responded to.
This problem was resolved by the QANTAS crew - not the idiots on EMIRATES who weren't listening or had not changed to the appropriate frequency.
How about some FACTUAL reporting instead of Qantas "bashing" to explain the EMIRATES aircraft was the problem.
"EMIRATES jet was on collision course" would be more appropriate.
Oh, but wait.
They give you huge freebees, upgrades etc and you wouldn't dare kill the goose that laid the golden egg. would you.
Let's not forget the EMIRATES takeoff in MEL that was as near as you could come to a disaster.
Oh, and what about the EMIRATES A380 that touched down on 34L at SYD, bounced, touched down firmly again and THEN reached the beginning of the threshold!!!!!!!
Cant' report these can we. I might lose my travel "perks"
Prostitute.